


the street lamp dies, another night is over

by rarmaster



Series: don't you worry child [22]
Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games), Tales of the Abyss
Genre: FtPvese, Gen, Implied/Referenced Past Abuse, Jade especially looks nothing like canon; repliku does a little, YWKON, they're both from AUs lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:49:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27447397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rarmaster/pseuds/rarmaster
Summary: another day is dawningJade (YWKON) and Repliku (FtPverse) are made to admit something about their past-- and bond over the things they have in common.[DYWC]
Series: don't you worry child [22]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1414204
Kudos: 8





	the street lamp dies, another night is over

**Author's Note:**

> "rar since when was ywkon jade here" listen. listen. don't worry about it.
> 
> i'm too lazy to get you links, this is incomprehensible if you aren't familiar with at least one AU anyway lmao. anyway i realized that these two had an uncomfortable amount in common and aera reminded me dywc existed so i. this.

“What does it want from us?” the boy Riku asks, pressed up against the wall behind him, as if sheer weight alone could stop it from moving any closer in. Jade’s less worried of the walls than he is of the darkness that gropes at their ankles, claws at the edges of their clothes. He swears he can feel it yanking on his hair, as if wishing to undo his braid, and he strongly dislikes it.

“I think,” Jade says, his own hands pressed against the wall behind _him,_ mostly due to lack of space. “I think it wants a fear. From each of us.”

“A fear?” Riku repeats, squinting like he either doesn’t get it or doesn’t like it. The way his weight is braced has him halfway slouching, and the closing-in walls means the toes of his shoes are pressed up against the wall next to Jade, just inches separating them. At least the walls aren’t closing in _fast._

But they are closing in fast enough that Jade doesn’t have time to explain, and then be _wrong._ He’s almost certain that’s what the riddle they were given means, and so… He clears his throat. Picks one of his worst fears, just because he dare not attempt to sate the thing trying to kill them with half-baked nonsense.

“I’m afraid of forgetting,” Jade says, staring at the wall right next to Riku’s head. “I know—I have lived long enough to be very intimate with how memory is fallible, and that there are things from ten, fifty years ago, that I can never hope to remember. But I’m really afraid of waking up one day and having my memory robbed from me completely.”

Riku’s attention swivels towards him, startled. A chord struck, perhaps? There still isn’t time.

“Well?” Jade says. He’ll apologize if they get out of this alive.

( _Where are their patron Aegises now, he wonders?_

 _Likely dealing with their own catastrophes, if reality is behaving like this for everyone._ )

Riku swallows. He pulls his attention away from Jade, staring at the wall across from him instead. He has to shift how he’s standing due to the walls, but somehow when he begins to speak he doesn’t seem taller at all. He seems, somehow, incredibly small.

“I’m,” he says, squeezing his eyes shut. “I’m afraid of. Of Larxene coming back. I’m afraid she’s not really dead.”

Something in Jade’s core hiccups.

“I’m afraid she’s not dead and that she’s still out there and she could still—could still hurt me.” Riku swallows. “That’s. That’s what I’m scared of.”

The rumbling that surrounds them stops, abruptly, then resumes. The walls begin moving _away_ from each other, which Jade notes when it pulls away from his touch and nearly upsets his balance. Jade stays standing fine, but Riku collapses, breathing heavy. The darkness accosting them has retreated as well, at least, which means Riku lands on concrete beneath them and not the pooling darkness.

“I’m sorry,” Jade says, because Riku deserves that of him.

“It’s- it’s fine, it worked,” Riku answers, gasping for air. “It’s—” He takes a shuddering breath, long and slow, and then seems to calm as he repositions his legs, folds them under each other, gripping his knees. “It’s—nothing, really. I’m- I’m glad to be alive.”

“Oh, seconded, for sure,” Jade agrees, brightly. “It means Mythra won’t kill me for dying.”

Riku laughs, short, but genuine and loud. “Ha! Yeah,” he agrees.

He rubs at his nose with one hand. Sniffs. Sends a wry look up at Jade.

“It’s—mine’s silly, isn’t it?” he asks. “Yours is profound… I could have said I was scared of dying, but… Dying doesn’t scare me nearly as much as…” He shudders.

Seeing as Riku doesn’t appear to be in the kind of mood to move any time soon, Jade sits himself down next to Riku, crossing his legs in a similar fashion.

“I understand your fear, though,” Jade says, as gentle as he can make the words. “Yes, absolutely, it is silly, and extremely irrational… but it’s a fear I find myself worrying about more often than I’d like to admit, sometimes.”

Riku squints at him for a moment, like he’s having trouble following… but then it must click, because there’s an expression of not just _understanding_ that crosses Riku’s face, but also connection.

“You…” he begins, and then shakes his head. “Sorry. You don’t have to tell me their name. Or give me details.”

“I appreciate that.”

“Thanks, though,” Riku says, cracking an unsteady smile. “Sometimes I just hate that I’m still scared of her. I _know_ she’s dead. And I know- I know even if she wasn’t, it’d be really hard for her to… I mean…” He trails off there, then shakes his head again, more forcibly this time, like trying to shake thoughts out of it. “No, no, I don’t wanna go down that road. She’s _dead_.”

Jade rests an elbow on his knee, rests his chin in his palm.

“The nightmares are the worst, aren’t they?” he asks, just to commiserate.

Riku laughs, bitter. “Yeah. She doesn’t even have to do anything, she just—”

“Has to be there,” Jade finishes.

It’s worth the smile Riku sends him, an echo of a smile he only ever sees on Mythra. The relief of someone else _getting it._

Riku shudders, fully body, then says: “Forgetting’s your worst fear, huh? Guess I can relate.”

Jade’s eyebrows climb gently into his hairline.

“You seem awfully young to be worrying about forgetting,” he chides, prodding Riku to offer the relevant information. He can make several guesses, of course—about the world Riku lives in, and what kind of world it is, but. Why guess if Riku’s willing to share?

“Oh, nah, it’s not…” Riku swallows, looks down at his fingers as he plays with them. “There was a girl—a witch—she had power over memories,” he explains, and Jade is glad he prodded for information because all of his guesses were nowhere near that. “And it’s not—I don’t blame her. I could never blame her. She was being forced to—Anyway. She could erase memories as she wished, though. And rewrite them. It. Yeah.”

He finishes, lamely, but the picture he has painted is stark enough to make Jade feel suddenly very cold.

“I imagine the rewritten memories would be worse,” he says, very careful about his tone. “Waking up a different person…” He shudders.

Riku shrugs. “The heart remembers, even if your mind doesn’t,” he says, which must mean something to him, even though Jade questions the logic behind it. “But there is so much about that time I don’t remember—It’s weird, sometimes. The worst part about forgetting is not knowing what you’ve forgotten.”

“It is,” Jade agrees.

Riku laughs, easy. “’m probably better without those memories though. I can take a guess as what I’m lacking… It can’t be much.”

“Oh, I can guess what I’m missing, too,” Jade agrees, because it’s probably several years of Citan being the asshole he always was, just with different fun flavors of murder. That doesn’t mean a part of him doesn’t ache sometimes, to know those memories, to know himself.

Riku leans back, looking Jade over. “You’ve… how did you forget?” he asks, genuine question of a boy who does not know the laws of Jade’s world.

Jade sighs. “Blades…” he begins.

“Oh!” Riku interrupts. “That’s right, Kratos mentioned. When blades die… oh.” His face darkens. “Man. I can’t imagine living like that.”

“It’s not great,” Jade agrees, knowing he’s had it much worse than most other blades.

Riku shudders, once, then pats his knees. “Well, that’s enough of that, huh?” he says.

“Quite.” Jade pushes himself to his feet, then offers a hand out to Riku to help pull him up. Riku surprises him by weighing approximately nothing, which leads to Riku bouncing a little, then laughing.

“Replicas are light,” he says, as if he’s gotten used to saying that a lot.

“Clearly,” Jade laughs. “Shall we get going? Hopefully there won’t be another horrible puzzle we’ll be forced to do. If I have to admit to the contents of my secret diary, I might just die.”

It’s a joke. Riku laughs.

“God, me too,” he agrees.

And they get going, both walking a little closer to each other than before, comforted by the relief of someone else understanding them in ways few others can.


End file.
